Media Matters’ Paul Waldman has a very angry article up at The American Prospect that can best be described as a cry of rage and frustration at the predominant position of Iowa (and to a lesser extent New Hampshire) in determining the Democratic presidential nomination, despite another three years of handwringing about the irrationality of the situation. Waldman’s take is distinctive mainly insofar as he assigns principal blame for Iowa’s continued power to the political press corps rather than to the candidates, the DNC, or to Iowans themselves.
I dunno about that. The DNC and the candidates, acting in concert, could have neutered IA and NH for this cycle, simply by refusing to recognize delegates chosen there, and by refusing to campaign there, just as they’ve successfully neutered efforts by MI and FL to change the calendar. The one point (which Waldman doesn’t raise) on which the media seem most responsible is with respect to the DNC’s one timid effort to interfere with the Duopoly, the authorization of a post-IA, pre-NH Caucus in Nevada. If current media coverage is any indication, NV’s theoretically important results aren’t going to get much attention at all as the press corps flies from Des Moines to Manchester in January (indeed, NV could lose its position entirely if IA and NH move up in response to the Republicans’ authorization of significant early events in MI and FL).
Waldman’s argument (echoed by Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias) that Iowa’s power is actually increasing strikes me as an overstatement of a situation that’s attributable to completely coincidental candidate dynamics. Given the total domination of the field, financially and in terms of national appeal, by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it’s true that for Edwards, a loss in IA will likely be the end of the road. But HRC can obviously survive an IA loss, and so could Obama, particularly in the case of an Edwards defeat which would create a one-on-one competition that is bound to help Obama. And for Richardson, Dodd or Biden, an upset third-place (much less second-place) finish in IA would represent a new lease on life, not a death sentence.
And look at the Republican side of the campaign: the two leading candidates (according to national polls) for the GOP nomination are both pursuing post-IA victory strategies (one, Fred Thompson, seems to be pursuing a post-IA, post-NH strategy). Sure, the refusal of candidates to boycott MI and FL is a factor here, but in part it’s because there are so many delegates to be won later. Maybe the media will crown Romney the nominee if he wins IA and NH anyway, but it’s just as likely that IA will create a viable dark horse like Huckabee who will muddy the waters.
By examining the low participation rates in the Duopoly events, Waldman does effectively dispute the much-heard claim that voters in IA and NH have earned their power by developing a tradition of careful and knowledgeable candidate vetting, essentially performing a public service for the rest of us, who would prefer to tune in much later. Iowa’s especially low participation rates are, of course, less attributable to apathy than to the peculiar demands associated with spending a long, cold evening listening to boring speeches, mastering the arcane Caucus rules, and also voting on party platform issues. But Waldman’s point is well-taken: it’s not like we’re witnessing the revival of Athenian democracy in IA or NH every four years.
He does not, however, grapple directly with the other common argument for beginning the nominating process as we do: it forces candidates to engage in a form of retail politics that keeps them from simply becoming actors in TV ads. Lest we forget, the first major effort to challenge the Duopoly on the Democratic side–the southern-based version of Super Tuesday held in 1988–produced what was then dubbed a “tarmac campaign” where the candidates never engaged with voters at all, and the results simply confirmed what had happened earlier in NH.
We obviously need a new system for nominating candidates for president. But we need a “system,” not just something that’s different from the status quo. The remarkable durability of the Duopoly has always suggested to me that the best opportunity to abolish it would be in a cycle where an incumbent president is running for re-election without intra-party opposition (a situation that Democrats have only enjoyed once since 1964). Maybe that could happen going into 2012. But shhhhhhh! Let’s don’t talk about it much, or Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire may start eliciting pledges to maintain the Duopoly forever.

The folks at Third Way have a poll and analysis out this week on the politics of abortion. The poll, by the Feldman Group, was actually conducted back in July. The analysis, by Third Way’s Rachel Laser, is new.
The main value of the poll is two-fold: first, instead of trying to force people into “pro-choice” and “pro-life” camps, it encourages expressions of ambiguity, best indicated by the fact that sizable majorities of Americans appear to simultaneously believe that abortion is the “taking of human life” and a practice that should basically be up to women and their families and doctors, not government. Second, the poll is pretty sophisticated in showing significant shifts of opinion on ancillary issues like emergency contraception, depending on whether the question links the subject explicitly to that of abortion prevention.
On a quick reading, the poll analysis seems to suggest that talking about abortion prevention (which is exactly what Third Way thinks progressive politicians should do) can backfire if perceived as a “dodge” of the underlying issue of abortion itself. But the only way around that is to self-label oneself as “pro-choice” before embracing the common ground of abortion prevention, which undoubtedly shrinks that common ground. Short of simply identifying oneself with the morally incoherent views of so many Americans, it’s hard to see a position that won’t ultimately fall prey to the polarized labels. And while reaching out to “the other side” does have the value of lowering temperatures, let’s not forget that we may well be one Supreme Court appointment away from a situation where yes-no questions about the legality of abortion become impossible to transcend.

I concluded the previous post by suggesting that Christian Right leaders needed some evidence that their Threat to take a walk if Republicans nominated Rudy Giuliani was shared by actual voters. Well, turns out (via TPMCafe’s Election Central) that there’s a new Rasmussen poll providing just that. It suggests that fully 27 percent of Republicans would go third-party in a hypothetical Giuliani-Clinton contest.
A poll showing support for an unnamed third-party candidate more than a year prior to an election is not terribly solid proof of what voters would actually do after a vicious and polarizing D versus R campaign. But it could raise some serious doubts among Republicans who don’t much like Giuliani but see him as the one guy who could hang onto the White House.

Just in case anybody in Republican elite circles wasn’t paying attention over the weekend when Christian Right leaders gathered in Salt Lake City and then threatened to abandon the GOP if Rudy Giuliani is its presidential candidate, two of those leaders stood on some of the largest MSM soapboxes to repeat The Threat.
On Monday night, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins went on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show and suggested not very subtly that conservative evangelical defections would make a Giuliani nomination “Hillary Clinton’s ticket to the White House.” And today, Perkins’ mentor, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, has an op-ed column in the New York Times making it clear that while Christian Right leaders aren’t united on a lot of things (including a candidate for president), they are united in the determination to take a walk if Rudy’s leading the ticket in 2008.
The timing and nature of The Threat is hardly coincidental. As yesterday’s Washington Post/ABC poll illustrated, electability is far and away Giuliani’s most valuable credential: fully half of Republicans in that poll said Rudy was the strongest candidate on that front. Perkins and Dobson are trying to raise every possible doubt about the ultimate truth of that proposition.
Sometimes threats are empty, of course. At The FundamentaList, Sarah Posner dismisses this one:

The idea that the Christian right would endorse a third-party candidate is ludicrous, given its pathological need to defeat Hillary Clinton and ultimately maintain sway over the White House. Focus on the Family’s James Dobson has a history of threatening defection from the GOP to endorse a third-party candidate. He has never followed through because he’s savvy enough to know it would render him irrelevant. No doubt the leaks were designed to put pressure on the GOP, not to nominate Giuliani.

Talk like that, of course, will also put pressure on Christian Right leaders to put up or shut up, and the real test of The Threat down the road will be the relative willingness of rank-and-file conservative evangelicals to rule out Rudy, and more importantly, to unite behind a candidate who could actually beat him.

If you tend to think of the progressive blogosphere as primarily an echo chamber in which lefty dittoheads are led around by celebrity bloggers, you should check out the raging debate going on at DailyKos over Markos Moulitsas’ condemnation of John Edwards’ decision to accept public financing. Markos’ four posts on the subject have drawn a total of 2,408 comments, which is a whole lot even for that very large site.
I haven’t had the time to read anything like all those comments, but get the feeling that overall sentiment is more or less equally divided between those who agree with Kos and those who don’t. Some of the debate tracks the broader blogospheric debate between partisan and ideological approaches; many Edwards supporters among the Kossacks basically consider him the only acceptably progressive major candidate, and consider Kos’ willingness to write him off as a surrender to a likely HRC nomination. But while there’s plenty of angry disagreement with Kos’ conclusions, there are very few Edwards supporters who are inclined to defend his public financing decision as a matter of principle rather than practical expediency. On the other hand, a DailyKos reader poll suggests that the decision, and Kos’ reaction to it, doesn’t seem to be changing many minds about the Edwards candidacy.

It’s Wonderful Wednesday for Senator Hillary Clinton, who’s dominating political news with a double-barreled accomplishment: third-quarter fundraising numbers that return her to the top of the money pack after trailing Barack Obama for a good while; and a new Washington Post/ABC national poll that shows her with the support of a majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
On the money front, Clinton raised $27 million in the third quarter as compared to Obama’s $19 million (though her margin shrinks to $3 million if you exclude funds usable only for the general election; and Obama continues to have a solid lead in overall primary fundraising). But the bigger news was that she topped Obama in the number of new donors. Up until now, Obama’s ability to raise money from a small-donor base has been one of the signatures of his campaign.
The new poll shows Clinton expanding her lead in the nominating contest from a 41-27 margin over Obama in the last Post-ABC survey a few weeks ago to a 53-20 margin today (Edwards remained stable at 13, with no other candidate exceeding 3%). But the poll’s internal numbers are what makes it potentially significant. Here’s how the Post‘s Chris Cillizza summarizes them:

Women continue to be the bedrock of Clinton’s campaign strength; she takes 57 percent among women compared to 15 percent for Obama and 13 percent for Edwards. But, among men, too, her numbers have ticked up considerably and she now leads Obama 48 percent to 26 percent. In the Post poll earlies this month, Clinton received just 29 percent among men while in our July survey she drew 40 percent among men.
Her numbers have also grown among self-identifying Democrats and Democratic leaning Independents. Among the former group, Clinton is now at 56 percent — a ten point increase from the Post’s early September poll — while among the latter her number has increased 16 points to 46 percent.
Clinton is ahead among every age group (55+ voters is where she runs strongest with 60 percent support), in every region of the country (65 percent in the Northeast) and at every education level (high school or less 59 percent). White voters favor Clinton 52 percent to 17 for Obama and 16 percent for Edwards; black voters go for Clinton over Obama 51 percent to 38 percent.

On top of everything else, 57% of poll respondents now think Clinton is the most “electable” Democrat, indicating that as we get closer to actual voting and electability concerns typically rise, she’s turned that liability around, for the moment at least.
You can stare at these numbers for a while and come up with a few potential HRC weaknesses (e.g., the likelihood that her standing among African-Americans might decline in a one-on-one competition with Obama), and an Iowa loss might well change everything–but in general, she’s looking very strong.
After a week in which most of the media coverage of Clinton rev-olved, believe it or not, around Deep Analysis of her distinctive laugh, you’d have to guess she enjoying a good, uninhibited belly laugh today.

Tonight a new Washington Post/ABC poll came out that heavily focused on Iraq policies. But as is often the case, the poll creates nearly as much confusion as it dispels.
Check out these three sections of the poll analysis:

Overall, 55 percent of Americans want congressional Democrats to do more to challenge the president’s Iraq war policies, while only a third think the Democrats have already gone too far….
At the same time, there is no consensus about the pace of any U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. In July, nearly six in 10 said they wanted to decrease the number of troops there, but now a slim majority, 52 percent, thinks Bush’s plan for removing some troops by next summer is either the right pace for withdrawal (38 percent) or too hasty (12 percent would like a slower reduction and 2 percent want no force reduction); fewer, 43 percent, want a quicker exit….
Only about a quarter of all adults want Congress to fully fund the administration’s $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year, while two-thirds want the proposed allocation reduced, with 43 percent wanting it reduced sharply. (Three percent say Congress should approve no money at all.) Two-thirds of independents want Congress to reduce the funds allocated for the war effort, as do 83 percent of Democrats; 45 percent of Republicans agree.

So: According to this poll, a majority of Americans think Congress is failing to challenge Bush on Iraq; that Bush’s own troop “withdrawal plan” is about right or too fast; and that Bush’s war supplemental appropriations bill should be pared.
The funding numbers are particularly confusing. The actual decision on the table for Democrats in Congress isn’t about money numbers, but about whether they should take a hard-line position against any appropriations that don’t include a binding withdrawal deadline. Ultimately, that means a willingness to embrace a no-appropriations stance that this poll suggests only three percent of Americans support. (In July, a New York Times/CBS poll showed 61 percent of Americans wanted to make war appropriations contingent on a withdrawal timetable, another example of how wording nuances dramatically change opinions).
At OpenLeft, Chris Bowers, as shrewd a poll reader as anyone in the blogosphere, decides to interpret the numbers on Iraq funding in this latest poll as showing “Americans want to defund the war.” Well, that depends on a definition of “defund” that includes any reduction in funding.
Pollsters need to figure out ways to (a) test the Iraq issues actually facing Congress; (b) include in questions a few basic facts about troop withdrawals (i.e., that Bush is only talking about withdrawing “surged” troops) and funding levels (i.e., how much money buys what strategy); and (c) test some dynamic scenarios involding actions by Congress and reactions by Bush (i.e., a protracted funding fight).
Until that happens, new polls on Iraq will provide grist for spin, but not for any honest assessment of where the public is at present.

An interesting story that developed over the weekend, reported by Michael Scherer at Salon, was a gathering of Christian Right leaders in Salt Lake City that issued a semi-public threat to take a dive or even back a third party in 2008 if Rudy Giuliani is the GOP nominee for president.
The meeting, attended by James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Gary Bauer, among others, was a sidebar to a conference of the Council for National Policy, a Christian-Right dominated group of shadowy but but undoubtedly powerful provenance (Dick Cheney was the star speaker at this particular conference). According to Scherer, the attendees discussed all sorts of strategies for coping with Rudy’s front-runner status, including one of recruiting a new GOP candidate, or going third-party (the head of the right-wing fringe group, the U.S. Constitution Party, was also in the house).
My guess is that the meeting was intended as a big shot across the bow of GOP leaders to get them to take Christian Right opposition to Giuliani very seriously. You’d have to also figure that there was some discussion of the existing non-Rudy field, but any conclusions they might have reached on a consensus choice to block the New Yorker didn’t get leaked.
I wonder if the poohbahs in Salt Lake City had seen the new Newsweek poll that showed Mike Huckabee climbing up into double digits among likely Iowa Caucus-goers, just behind Giuliani and Thompson.
The same poll also showed Barack Obama moving into the lead among likely Democratic Iowa Caucus-goers, with Clinton second and Edwards third.

Most of the media coverage of money in presidential politics is really just a subset of the horse-race discussion: who’s got the most jack to spend where, and what does that say about their “viability?”
But now and then, you get a money issue with strategic implications, and that seems to be the case with John Edwards’ announcement yesterday that he was opting into public financing for his nomination campaign.
From a horse-race perspective, Edwards’ decision seems entirely logical: he can’t keep up with Clinton’s and Obama’s massive fundraising; he’ll probably have enough money with public matching funds to get through the big February 5 primaries if everything breaks right for him; and most importantly, public financing will give him a timely cash infusion going into Iowa in January, a contest he needs badly to win.
But here’s the party-wide strategic problem: by accepting public financing, Edwards will lock himself into a total primary spending “cap” that won’t expire until the Democratic convention. The concern I’m hearing today in insider circles is that if Edwards wins the nomination, he might well put the ticket at a large financial disadvantage to the GOP, whose nominee (unless it’s McCain or some other darkhorse who soon accepts public financing) will be able to run unopposed ads pounding him as a godless ambulance-chasing troop-hater through the spring and much of the summer. In other words, he’d handcuff the party.
Markos Moulitsas did a post yesterday airiing these fears (and calling the Edwards decision “stupid’); he then went on to update the post by reporting the Edwards campaign’s calm response to the handcuffing argument (e.g., the “cap” has a lot of exclusions, and non-campaign 527 organizations would be able to respond to any GOP barrage of ads). Then today Kos did another post basically arguing with the Edwards money strategy, and concluding that it puts a Democratic win in 2008 at an unacceptable risk.
I’m not suggesting that the real, live voters who will determine the Democratic nomination are following this exchange, or will care about it (though the blast from Kos is obviously not helpful to a campaign that’s worked very hard to make Edwards the preferred netroots candidate). But the underlying issue does throw some sand into the overarching argument that Edwards’ campaign has been making: he’s the best on the issues from a progressive point of view, and he also happens to be the most electable candidate as well. Given the well-documented interest of Iowa Democrats in particular about “electibility,” anything that raises doubts about Edwards on that score is bound to hurt. We’ll know pretty soon if such doubts have actually been raised, or if this is just another obscure insider bean-counting fight about unimaginably large sacks of cash.

Week before last, Matt Compton posted a review here of Matt Bai’s influential book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle To Remake Democratic Politics.
For those who enjoyed Matt’s review, or have read the book, or have simply heard the buzz about it, I recommend you go over to TPMCafe, where there’s an extensive discussion of it, including Bai himself, Mark Schmitt, Joan McCarter (a.k.a. McJoan), Garance Franke-Ruta, Nathan Newman, The Reapers (Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger) and yours truly.
To my surprise, much of the discussion (largely driven by the ever-thoughtful Mark Schmitt) has been not about the internal “argument” among Democrats on the direction of the party, but about the external “argument” Democrats need to present concerning the big challenges facing the country. It’s perhaps the most extensive discussion of a book I’ve seen at TPMCafe, and it’s still expanding. Check it out.